[mkhorton]

> Is there any way I could use this to see if there was merit in that idea?

It likely can't give you an instant answer, but it can be a good starting point for a research project. For example, Materials Project has information about the dielectric properties of a material, has datasets for electron conductivities, vibrational (phonon) properties and the like. So you would start by searching the dataset for the properties of interest to get a shortlist of candidate materials, and then do more focused studies based on those.

Note that the Materials Project does also have known materials in its database that are currently used extensively in real-world devices too, so it can also be used to provide additional information about those materials. In this way, if you're looking for an improvement on an existing material, you can start with a known-good material and see if similar materials might exist that offer an improvement on your property of interest.